


of wagers and of wanting

by pensee



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom, King Arthur (2004)
Genre: A/B/O, Alphas being sexist, But they fall in Love somehow, F/M, Galahad fucking up said Alphas, Historically inaccurate obviously, I don’t know what to name the bird other than Isolde, Late bloomer Galahad, M/M, Pregnancy Kink, Read the notes for warnings in each chapter, Short Chapters, So read: Uncommunicative and blunt when he does bother to open his mouth, The knights being hella supportive of Galahad doing this, Tristan is Tristan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 05:00:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19738813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensee/pseuds/pensee
Summary: Galahad’s coming of age story, with a whole lot of kilt-chasing and reluctance because Alphas that can’t best him in battle shouldn’t be allowed to best him in bed.(Tristan has quite a time of trying to convince Galahad he’s really interested in courting him properly. May have something to do with the fact that they’ve spent most of their years together being indifferent to one another rather than seeking anything more.)





	of wagers and of wanting

**Author's Note:**

> The relationship tags with OFCs are peripheral and not endgame.
> 
> Galahad’s encounter in the first chapter in particular is kind of weird (his biology is interested but his romantic interest less so), so read carefully! (Tristan and Galahad have sex/almost have sex with the same person at different times).
> 
> For age reference, I see Galahad as about 19, and Tristan as in his mid to late 20s.

By the time Galahad has neared maturity, he is already an accomplished knight in Arthur’s elite command, and thus tasked with patrolling Hadrian’s Wall. Arthur shares the duty with various other Roman squads, in alternating fortnight shifts, with his knights participating in various states of enthusiasm, though everyone tends to be a bit more chipper than usual at the time of the new moon.

Every new moon, they pass a large tavern on the side of the road, with fluffy straw mattresses that don’t smell of mold, and fragrant stew with identifiable components, which is more than the offerings they face on most campaigns. For these reasons, Galahad looks forward to stopping at the friendly inn, though he knows the others appreciate the…company…the place offers as well.

His next name day, Bors promises they’ll all chip in to buy him a woman, though it’s been no mystery to Galahad what he would present as, despite said presentation being technically more-than-belated in terms of his still-weak pheromones. The others took it for granted that his body would eventually catch up and present as an Alpha, like most of them, or at the very least as a beta like Percival and Gawain. For this was how fiercely he fought in battle, how devious and cunning the great Galahad was praised among his friends. 

But Galahad knew the truth, had known the feeling of eyes roving over him, recalled the sensation of being casually groped by half a dozen Alphas—men and women—whilst Arthur had brought them along on business in the capitol. Galahad, uncaring for his assailants’ social stature or lack of it, had promptly broken the largest pervert’s nose and strode away (to horrified gasps and admiring glances, of course, neither of which he particularly cared for).

The disrespect hadn’t stopped with those pigs in the capitol, though, a small horde of Roman centurions and common folk alike at the very least _watching_ him, as if they could see the secrets hidden beneath his clothes. That’s why he’s never let Bors purchase a whore for him; the others will find out in their own time, when he finally presented and his scent matched the body he was born with, and he does not need some farm girl’s amusement or pity or worse, _fascination_ , to accompany the experience when it happens.

And he could also do without Tristan’s lewd commentary invading his head at the moment, he thinks, his cheeks heating. In the great, vast dark of his dreaming thoughts—beyond the wet snores of unconscious knights scattered around him within the inn’s cramped dining room—an image of the older Alpha flickers into his mind’s eye, that rough, deep voice cutting through his current drunken stupor.

Bleary-eyed and in possession of a pounding headache, he glances about quickly, everyone—even Arthur—else still passed out with some variation of a serving girl or girls flung over their thighs. Everyone save Tristan, who is on the bench opposite, right in Galahad’s line of vision, a curly-haired brunette bouncing in his lap.

“Take it,” he’s grunting, her high voice moaning nonsense words, sweat dripping down her smooth back.

Before today, he’s heard Tristan say a grand total of twenty words in the years he’s known the older boy—more of a man than Galahad is, at any rate—and _never_ anything like this.

“Do you want that, sweetling? _Fuck_. I’ll come back to see the baby growing inside you. See the son you’ll give me in nine moons.”

She squeals some nonsense, Galahad pressing his face back to the cold table, pretending to be asleep, pretending he’s not following every hungry thrust of their hips, squeezing his own thighs together when Tristan’s hand slaps her quivering cheeks, his long fingers teasing at her asshole.

“Yes, give it to me, my knight, give me your son,” she breathes, and Galahad can see the wet sheen of her fluids between them as they coat Tristan’s knot, as he pulls out, so not to hurt her, his seed spilling onto the bench.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she huffs, pressing a sweet kiss to his temple. “I know the ritual. I’ll drink the tea in the morning, and they’ll be no baby.”

Tristan grunts unintelligibly, maybe speaking in his mother’s tongue, something Galahad vaguely remembers, though the words hardly seemed so guttural from his own parents’ mouths. He slaps the girl’s round bottom once more, pushes her away, doing up his breeches after wiping his cock off with a cloth he shamelessly places back beneath Dagonet’s half-eaten dinner.

Mortifyingly wet, Galahad curls his toes in his boots and grumbles as if in sleep, turning his face over till it’s pillowed in his other arm, too terrified to make a sound. He listens for Tristan’s heavy footfalls fading into the night, and only then does he dare to flinch.

The moon is still dark, but there is light enough from the torches kept burning along the edges of the property, and Galahad stills as he realizes he is not the only one who has chosen to partake in a late-night bath in the stream behind the inn.

He is already submerged up to his lower thighs when the girl—the one Tristan had in his lap, earlier—sees him.

“I didn’t know there were really boys like you,” she says, her Latin relatively crisp, though she is what Bors would call (and not in compliment), a simple country wench.

“My sister—the smarter one, anyway, the one that can read a bit—she said there were princes like you, in the old tales grandmother used to tell her. I thought to ask her, because your face is so…well, it seems like something out of a story. And your scent is so strange... it isn’t like anything I’ve ever smelled before.”

Galahad sees her silhouetted, her body lithe and tight as she joins him in the stream, and feels a twinge of arousal in his gut. Though her face is not exceptionally pretty (as she was implying of his own) to his eyes, they could be mistaken for brother and sister in the right light.

“My face is just like anyone else’s,” he says, trying to sound gruff, pointedly leaving out a comment about his own scent, but she just smiles.

“You can come closer, you know. I don’t bite.”

He snorts. “Well, I do,” he mutters, half-gasping at the rush of cold water against his nether regions. It was better than lying in his own stickiness all night, and the cloying smell that would replace it after his slick dried, but scrubbing himself clean with company present had not been his intent.

Stupid, not paying attention to where the girl had gone once Tristan had left, but it was his own fault, now, so he focused on getting clean instead of how close she was getting to him, the lazy current parting around her plump thighs.

“You don’t look like you bite,” she whispers, like they’re friends, or lovers, and Galahad instinctively draws back, though she catches his wrist before he can successfully back away.

He’s cut down grown men with swords and spears who’ve tried the same maneuver, though he wears no armor now, and his arms, above the water as they are, are not slippery enough to lend him the advantage. He can’t escape a little farm girl, he thinks nonsensically, until he breaks her grip with a snarl, her eyes wide with surprise. 

_You_ _sly_ _thing_ , he frowns, as she retreats almost gracefully, a smirk playing across her lips.

He holds his breath as she guides a hand down to the triangle of hair between her legs, the tips of her fingers pressing _just_ into herself, enough to produce a pleasured gasp.

Upper row of teeth biting down, he feels the scant growth of beard tickle the inside of his upper lip, trying to hold in a groan, slick warmth pooling between his cheeks. He watches her nipples pebble with cold and interest, some instinct within him thinking it might be nice to use his mouth for better things than sewing itself shut, but a loud, shrill cry breaks the little cocoon of warmth they’ve ensconced themselves in, and he tears his eyes away from the girl to study the intruder instead. 

A loud, echoing flap of wings, and a flicker of red eyes in the dark. Isolde, watching them in disapproval, never far from her master’s hand.

What Galahad does not see are the pair of equally intrigued human eyes, disguised behind the brush, smiling at the development.

_All this information from an innocent walk and a midnight piss. And I didn’t even need to make the effort,_ Tristan grins to himself, lacing up his breeches and calling Isolde back with a barely audible whistle.

Reeling at the sensation of being spied upon despite not spotting more than the span of Isolde’s wings, Galahad breaks away from the girl, unobtrusively continuing to wash himself on the opposite end of the bank.

Yet another reason never to come back here once I’m free, he thinks, not knowing if he means his reason to be the girl or Tristan or the bloody bird circling over their heads as he sighs to himself, the torches flickering when Isolde passes over them, the sluggish flow of water loud in Galahad’s ears.

**Author's Note:**

> Tristan why.


End file.
